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Got interesting feedback from a new reader of, both, Through Better & Worse and To Have & To Hold. She read them back to back. She suggested I was more sympathetic to my male characters than to my female characters. I asked her why she thought that, and she told me: “…because you give them so many good scenes.”

I scratched my head on that one, a bit, then asked her if I didn’t give my females good scenes. She said, I did, but that she was more used to books where the female got most of the good, juicy scenes, and the men “not so much.”

Then she gave me a real grin, because she said: “I got more giggles and laughs from seeing how the men reacted. The books are great.”

One of the really irritating things I find with a lot of “genre” works is the exact opposite thing I find irritating about a lot of “literary” works. I could boil it down to ‘lite’ versus ‘heavy’, genre writers manufacturing character and story straight out of superficial, even wishful, thinking while Lit writers purposely dig deep into their personal, often jaundiced and self-serving, study of human nature and experiences, writing from the pits of despair, bleeding angst into some cherished theme and motif.

Can we have some balance, please?

I’ve retaken to writing more ‘fits into a genre’ works, something I haven’t done for awhile. And, in reading quite a number of latest works of genres closest to what I’m writing, I find a distinctive lack of serious consideration for reader intelligence – a SERIOUS lack. …Either that, or the authors are, A, completely out-of-touch, and, worse, B, consider their readership stupid.

…At least that’s my first take. Here’s my second. It’s worse.

I got “whiffs” of some stinky stuff from a couple of editor/writers I keep tabs on:
“…Oh. I see. You’re trying to ed-ja-ma-cate your women readership into only accepting as valid men who fit the following behavior parameters! Gotit!” And the same scheming is true for the male editors/writers. They are trying to ed-ja-ma-cate their audience into their brand of acceptable behavior types – all very PC, mind…in a citified, sophisticated, even thoroughly post-modern version of projected appropriateness…which, many times, means edgy, even over-the-top, on one hand, while thoroughly, even disgustingly callow and even insipid on all three other appendages. (That would be on the other hand, plus on the two feet, for those unfamiliar with standard human anatomy.)

As to “Thoroughly Modern Lit” deserving some Ivory Tower Approved Prize, you can just about forget them all. It’s fiction that literally whines and sniffles, screams and points fingers at all those bad…. (Yes, I’m stopping right there. Fill in your own favorite cause. Meanwhile, I’ll just get back to writing something I myself enjoy reading.)

One of the things that can put a wrench in my day is someone or several someones who decide to take some word or words, assign a social stigma to it, throw out a condemning values judgement, which then turns the topic into a platform for that social values discussion, adding insult to injury by stating that, “Well, they wouldn’t even look at a book that contained a word like that in the promo copy.”

Well, then don’t.

And I was going to say that, but didn’t. Instead, I went onto explain some of the story underlayment, trying to get past that and back to getting feedback.

But the social values discussion perpetuated. And I finally spit out my own feelings on the subject – politely, I thought – but pointedly, because they had been pointed.

It irks the hell out of me when someone turns a feedback request into a personal forum to promote their “social injustice” platform, especially when that particular social injustice has nothing to do with anything involving the novel and topic. At all.

Now, I’ll fully admit, I’ve been guilty of doing that. Because I have. I ran into a male writer whose entire premise was based on a particularly foul (in my opinion) perspective. And I said something. And I shouldn’t have. I should have done what I do now – moved on, ignoring it. Pedophiles and megalomaniac, sadistic misogynists have a right to exist, too, I suppose. But, damn, don’t assign some ill-informed social injustice label on me or mine just because you think you’ve got some vested right to declare me something your imagination cooked up – a misinformed imagination.

Don’t scold me. And don’t try to lecture me on things upon which you ain’t got a clue.

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